RELUCTANT NOVICE : KAYAKING : User Friendly : Even a landlubber can learn the joys of exploring the ocean’s wonders under his own paddle power.

You move to Southern California from the vast, beachless heartland of America--and what a pain. No matter what’s happening in your life, your old friends keep asking, “Are you taking advantage of the ocean out there?”

You try snappy answers. You hedge. But soon the silence at your end of the phone might as well be a loudspeaker announcing your longitude on the couch and the titles of your latest stack of rented videos.

OK, OK, you’ll take advantage of the ocean. And one day, filled with self-satisfaction, you find something that will shut everyone up for a while: ocean kayaking at Santa Cruz Island.

The weekly trips are organized by Channel Island Watersports in Ventura, along with its sister store, Santa Barbara Watersports. Shove off time is 7:30 a.m. from the Santa Barbara Harbor aboard the 48-foot Spirit. Everybody spends 90 minutes getting to the island, then expert kayakers lead up to 24 people in cliff-side paddling and sea cave exploring.

On the phone it sounds pretty good. Second thoughts begin on the drive to the harbor. Dancing on the asphalt in front of your car are images of 20-foot waves casually swallowing your tiny vessel. Capsizing scenes from the movie “Deliverance” replay in your head. You keep picturing the legal form whereby you “hereby agree to accept any and all risks of injury and death.”

The pros, of course, have assured you that the sport really is quite safe.

“Most people think ocean kayaks are tippy and that they’ll get wet,” says Tom Erickson, owner of Channel Island Watersports in Ventura. “But they’re really very user-friendly.”

Santa Barbara store manager Eric Little gives similar words of encouragement. “Even total novices can have a blast within half an hour,” he says.

He has not mentioned what happens in the first 29 minutes, you think darkly.

Shortly before 8 a.m. the Spirit, which doubles as a rescue vessel for the nonprofit Marine Mammal Center of Santa Barbara, edges away from the harbor. Sixteen novices, six crew members and two dozen kayaks are on board.

One voyager is destined not to return, but that is OK. Boris, a harbor seal rescued during a similar trip several weeks earlier, has undergone surgery to remove gill nets embedded in his neck.

By 8:30, as the boat noses steadily over the waves, it is clear that Sambo’s mammoth breakfast special, wolfed an hour earlier, probably wasn’t such a great idea. Little, a tanned, athletic-looking man whose apparent imperviousness to sea sickness is due to a medical patch worn behind one ear, hands out remedies to the few who need them. You are among them.

Soon the boat stops. All around the jagged coastline of Santa Cruz Island the sky is clear and the sun is shining brightly. The world’s largest sea cave is a stone’s throw away. The engine’s churning has been replaced by the barking and splashing of several hundred seals.

One would-be kayaker scans the almost vertical cliffs. “Where’s the pier?” he asks nervously, eliciting laughter from the group.

Little explains that each person will be lowered into a kayak at the foot of the boat and then shown how to paddle.

Boris’ cage is opened. He needs no instruction and is instantly among his friends.

Now it is time for the humans. Wearing shorts, a light jacket and life vest, you step gingerly into the plastic kayak, which looks no thicker than a Frisbee. Kim Sprague, an expert kayaker and guide for the trip, assures you that it takes a lot of work to tip one of these babies over. You smile weakly. He smiles back and then gives you a gentle shove out into the sea.

There is a moment of elation that comes whenever you get past a harbor-clinging mentality and expose yourself to some unknown--and then realize that you actually like it. With sea kayaking, the elation comes with the wind and sun on your face, your paddle dipping on either side of you and propelling you silently.

The kayak, you discover, is surprisingly stable in the water. It doesn’t take much effort to move steadily. Learning how to prevent zigzagging takes a bit more practice.

After allowing everyone a few minutes to get used to the side-to-side paddling movement, the guide leads the group into the throat of Painted Cave, the world’s largest sea cave at almost a quarter-mile deep and 100 feet high. Starfish and sea urchins cling to the walls in the semi-darkness.

One of the more experienced kayakers maneuvers past the group until he is only a few inches from the back wall of the cave. Balancing his paddle like a maritime cowboy, he rides the swells of the waves that crash into the rock behind him. Each abrupt dip of his kayak, which remains the same distance from the cave wall, is punctuated by a spirited, “yee-ha. “

Afterward, the group explores several other caves before winding back along the coast for lunch on the boat. En route, it fans out across the water, each person finding a comfortable pace. After allowing yourself to drift pensively in the sun, you are startled out of your reverie by the sight of the rest of the group disappearing behind a cliff. For a few moments you’re a Volkswagen bug trying to catch up with the Maseratis.

Sea kayaking doesn’t require much expertise or muscle power, but it does require a certain amount of endurance. By the end of the day, as the boat heads for home, most people on board nap or stare silently out at the waves.

Only a newly rescued seal, sitting in his cage on the bow, seems to care when the boat will arrive.

This week’s Reluctant Novice is Aurora Mackey Armstrong.